Tintin In Congo On Trial In Belgium


I just can't resist... The 1930s is a very long time ago, but still, there are people with chips on their shoulders. One case is the current trial in Belgium against the album Tintin In The Congo. And here is my take on this sorry affair (hrm):

I totally agree that Tintin in Congo should be banned and erased from the history books. Why? Obvious! It portrays a young white man as an agent of colonialism in Africa: we just cannot allow that story to be told in 2011! Why should a picture book about a white man and his noble efforts back then still be read today, when we are so much more enlightened and know that all men are created equal, and that white men are (and thus were!) no better or worse than anyone else! Let's stop this implied racism against young white men, once and for all. In fact, prohibit all of the Tintin books, while we are at it, since young white men are bound to find his actions so outlandishly lacking in values that we regard as common sense today, 80 years later!

Look at how they portray Tintin, a young white man, wearing silly trousers!

And while we are at it, we should ban all Agatha Christie books with that caricature of a Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot: it is just so insensitive to all fat yet highly intelligent men, especially white, from Belgium, who happen to like nice clothes and proper cuisine. AND of course, time to erase Charlie Chaplin from the world of cinema too, as he represents a poor white man in America, we just cannot have that, can we, what will the rest of the world think? What else should be banned while we are at it? As a white man, I feel so bad about all the representations of us in books in the past, let's just ban them all! Erase all descriptions of white men from literature!

(Image of Tintin hitting a black man, just another reason to ban this album, as it perpetrates the image of all white men as violent!)

AFP: 'Tintin in the Congo' lawsuit in Brussels



Here is The Adventure of Tintin - The Seven Crystal Balls, one of my favourites:

Comments

Anonymous said…
What many people forget is that Herge, the author, has been accused of being a nazi sympathizer during WWII!
Tom O said…
'Accused' is rather too strong a word. The newspaper he happened to working for, drawing cartoons lest we forget, was maybe not too anti-Nazi due to them occupying the country. Check out the story of King Ottakar's Sceptre, where the leader of a 'bad' threatening country is called Musstler. Have a guess what names those could a combination of? Of course the truth could get in the way of a good story...

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